A Herzen Reader

Herzen's years in the West solidified and crystallized his belief that Rus­sia had to follow its own path in finding solutions to its distinctive prob­lems. Picking up on a line of argument that had already been suggested in one form or other in the 1830s and 1840s, Herzen asserted that Russia's isolation from the West could play in its favor, allowing it to bypass the deleterious features of an ill and declining Western civilization, which was hampered by alien conventions such as Roman contracts and codes cre­ated to regulate European individualism. Antipodal to this conception of a decadent West was Herzen's central image of an idealized mir, the Rus­sian peasant village or commune. The mir, which became the keystone of Herzen's mature thought and his great hope for an indigenous, egalitarian solution to Russia's problems, became so attractive to Herzen in part due to his pressing need to find an organic, nonviolent answer to issues that Europe itself could not fully solve.

In this regard, England provided a useful model—an island that had fol­lowed its own course in a gradual manner, over the span of centuries, from the Magna Carta to the development of an elected parliament and inde­pendent judiciary, with a long tradition of civic duty, a vigorous free press, and a relatively high degree of personal liberty. In this environment Her- zen was allowed to operate, unencumbered by government, authorities, or censorship, despite Russia's pleas to shut him down. Moreover, during his years in London Herzen became apprised of the very different perspective of English intellectuals on events occurring on the Continent, especially those of i848.⁹⁵

In the ideational realm, during his Bell years, Herzen was profoundly influenced by two English thinkers, J. S. Mill and Robert Owen. Mill's writ­ings, especially on liberty, struck a chord with Herzen, who agreed with much of Mill's critique on herd-like behaviour of the contented masses, the sameness, banality, and lack of individual expression that was increasingly characterizing modern European society. Herzen found in Mill the perfect support for the argument that Russia could not rely on Western solutions, because the West itself was ill, exhausted, and in decline. Herzen utilized Robert Owen, whom he regarded as an exemplary champion of socialism, in a similar fashion. It was not the authorities who caused Owen's plans to founder, but the lack of support and understanding from the broad masses, whose Western, bourgeois individualism made them numb to higher ide­als and the rewards of social solidarity.

It is precisely at this stage of his life, witnessing the wide berth of civic freedom allowed to both individuals and groups in England, yet observing the inability of society to advance further and capitalize on the possibili­ties at hand, that Herzen developed his theory on the cardinal importance of educating the people, a vital requirement without which real progress could not be made. External changes in the system were not enough, and there was little to be gained by simply altering the structure of government and allowing the masses to do as they pleased. Herzen learned during his London years that, if anything, the English were more conformist and less likely to speak out than those on the Continent, precisely because of the fact that they already enjoyed a fair degree of personal freedom, and required lit­tle more from life than the illusion that they were exercising their freedom, or, at least, could do so if they desired.⁹⁶ In Mill and Owen, Herzen found both champions and foils for his own doctrine of liberty and socialism, with both figures demonstrating the pitfalls of Western society in its inability to provide a proper vehicle for the ideals they espoused. Paradoxically, Herzen enlisted Mill to counter the aspirations of Russia's liberals, who hoped that reforms would lead to a bourgeois Western model. Herzen, via Mill, and through his own experience in the West, pointed out the shallowness and futility of such limited aspirations.